One of the two remaining candidates to represent San Antonio’s Northside District 9 council seat has pulled back from some public events since finishing first in the May 3 municipal election — at the same time documents circulating among local political circles have cast her personal financial history in a negative light.

GOP activist Misty Spears, 44, is well-known and liked in conservative circles, helping her lock down 38% of the vote in a field of seven candidates running to represent some of the city’s reddest territory.

Since no candidate took 50% of the vote, however, she’s headed to a June 7 runoff against Angi Taylor Aramburu, 49, a former Democratic state House candidate who finished just 400 votes behind Spears — 35.6% — in the first round.

In the roughly five-week gap between those two races, Spears’ campaign told the San Antonio Report she had maxed out her schedule with grassroots campaign activity, and would be unable to make time for a runoff debate.

She also declined invitations from Texas Public Radio, the District 9 Alliance and the Independence Hill Retirement Resort Community, as well as an interview request from the San Antonio Report this week.

“Leading up to early voting, Misty and the campaign have shifted focus to direct voter engagement — knocking on doors, making phone calls, and getting our message out where it matters most: at the doors and on the phones with District 9 residents,” Spears’ campaign manager Jennifer Hendrix said in an email Sunday.

“That’s the only reason she wasn’t present at a few of the more recent forums.”

Taylor Aramburu said she accepted all of the invitations she received, but many were cancelled when her opponent declined.

“This is kind of a low-radar race for a lot of the community, and the majority of people don’t know us,” Taylor Aramburu said. “I’m really disappointed that she’s chosen to not participate and not be open to answering questions to the community.”

Some candidates strategically do more or fewer public appearances than their opponent, but Spears’ low-profile campaign comes as circulating documents that reveal details about her personal financial history have also caused some to suggest she’s purposefully avoiding questions about the matter.

The origin of the records is unclear, but this week appeared on a website attacking Spears. All of the documents are public records and had previously been shared with the San Antonio Report by multiple sources.

“She had been accepting [debate invitations] and now she’s not,” Taylor Aramburu said. “I don’t know if she’s afraid of being asked about her financial history or what.”

Spears’ campaign, on the other hand, said the decision to attend fewer public events was purely a reallocation of campaign resources.

“Misty participated in 11 public forums before the runoff and four more since,” Hendrix said. “Any suggestion that she’s avoiding the public or the press is simply false.”

Pocketbook issues

Fiscal issues are frequently top-of-mind for Northside voters, and Spears, who has a degree in accounting from Texas Tech, has been campaigning hard on her fiscally conservative principles — even questioning whether the city should continue the bond program it uses to for major infrastructure projects.

“When I hear bond, I hear debt, and we are in debt, and so I have great concern about issuing new bonds,” she said at a District 9 Alliance forum at Methodist Stone Oak hospital on March 26.

But critics have been quick to point out that Spears and her husband, Fourth Court of Appeals Justice Adrian Spears, had a series of federal tax liens filed against them between 2009 and 2013, as well as a 2014 lien for unpaid dues to the Woods of Encino Park Homeowners Association.

While those debts have since been settled, Spears was still fighting a years-old $8,997 credit card case with Discover Bank earlier this year. A judgment was issued against her on March 17 and vacated the next day. Spears’ campaign said Sunday that she is continuing to fight Discover for “inaccurate fees during the COVID pandemic.”

At a San Antonio Report debate on April 17, Spears was asked about the debts and answered that her family’s past financial hardships were relatable to many people, and displayed the skills and resilience needed to get back on her feet.

“My husband was involved in the oil and gas industry about 20ish years ago when it crashed, and we got some tax liens and paid them off over 10 years ago, so that’s old and it’s expired and no good,” Spears said. “As far as the credit card case, I am winning that case. I’m not going to pay what I don’t owe, and I’m going to fight the same way for District 9.”

If elected to the council, Spears said she’d use her broad range of experience to be an advocate for taxpayers, pointing to past roles working for Clear Channel Communications and Pioneer Drilling Company, in addition to more recent work with her family businesses.

“We started my husband’s law practice and represented and sued local governmental entities, and he’s now a justice at the Fourth Court of Appeals,” she said during the debate. “And I have worked really hard at raising our family, and [at working] in the sphere of being an appellate paralegal, so I have a great understanding of election law and municipalities.”

“I have all these skills with my accounting that really lend to understanding how to be fiscally responsible and knowing how to get us out of a bind,” Spears said. “You can trust me, because I’ve already done it.”

This week, Spears declined to be interviewed to discuss her recent campaign strategy.

“I’m focused on how the city spends your money — not on political distractions meant to avoid that conversation,” she said in an emailed statement.

Money talks

Taylor Aramburu has also been running on her experience managing big budgets, as tough spending conversations loom for the next council.

Before moving to San Antonio with her family a decade ago — a return home for her husband — Taylor Aramburu managed Broadway and off-Broadway theaters in New York City. She later worked as an arts management consultant conducting feasibility studies for performing arts centers.

“I managed a multi-million dollar budget for nonprofits during the 2008 financial crisis,” she said in a recent interview. “That’s experience that will lend itself to City Hall, especially when we’re dealing with a budget deficit and cuts from the federal government.”

She later started her own fitness company, took on leadership roles in the Parent Teacher Association, and served on North East ISD’s “efficiency committee,” which advised on campus closures and other cost-saving mechanisms.

While Taylor Aramburu said Spears’ “history of financial troubles” was “concerning,” she added that more worrying to her was the idea that her opponent would come into the job with insufficient management experience.

“What I’m concerned about is, I don’t see in her history any leadership positions,” Taylor Aramburu said. “Has she managed a big staff? Has she managed a large budget? I don’t think she has. And I have all of that experience.”

A rare opening

District 9 encompasses the city’s far north side, starting north of Loop 410 and stretching up near Timberwood Park along U.S. 281.

Despite its conservative reputation, Councilman John Courage (D9), who ran for office as a Democrat many times before he was elected to the council, repeatedly fended off conservative opponents with a more centrist approach.

Now that Courage has termed out, local Republicans who currently control few elected offices are eager to get their hands on a seat drawn more in their favor than any other council district.

Spears has long been active in Republican politics and served as the GOP’s nominee for county clerk in 2022.

At a recent Republican Club of Bexar County candidate meet-and-greet at Chester’s Hamburgers, Spears did not attend, but campaign surrogate Kyle Bolch spoke on her behalf, and framed the District 9 race as mission-critical.

While the GOP hopes to expand its South Texas gains all the way across blue San Antonio in this runoff election — through the mayor’s race and three council seats — he said the party is in real trouble if it doesn’t flip this particular district.

“You can’t expect us to win road games if you can’t even win our home game, right?” Bolch said. “District 9 is supposed to be the big conservative district, but what’s happened in the last eight years?”

Alternatively, when the Bexar County Democrats met to make their runoff endorsements, Taylor Aramburu asked them not to include her, despite having run for office as a Democrat in the past.

“I really appreciate them wanting to endorse me and support me, but I really feel it’s important to let the community know that I truly believe this should be a nonpartisan race,” Taylor Aramburu said. “I’m concerned about how partisan it has become.”

Indeed, in a low-interest election, much of the discussion in D9 has been about names Democrats and Republicans already know: Courage, who is helping Taylor Aramburu, and Bexar County Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3), who is helping Spears.

Courage has opened many doors in the district for Taylor Aramburu, but she’s had to work to convince voters she’s her own brand of politician, and faced criticism that the councilman tried to help pay her campaign staff from his office budget.

“He has endorsed me and he has been incredibly helpful himself, but no, his staff is not working on my campaign,” she said.

Meanwhile Spears’ time working for Moody helped her quickly scoop up endorsements from the influential police and fire unions, which put up signs on her behalf.

“There’s a familiarity … we know her work,” said Joe Jones, president of the San Antonio Professional Fire Fighters Association, who noted that the group considers Moody a close ally.

Jones said the union was aware of the discussion surrounding Spears’ financial history and still fully supports her.

“We’re Americans, there are hardships in life. There’s ups and downs. There’s also explanations for everything that I’m aware of,” Jones said. “I don’t see any attempt to try and mislead anybody.”

Taylor Aramburu, in turn, has been backed by an array of left-leaning labor groups: San Antonio’s AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, AFSCME (the union representing city employees) and the Northside American Federation of Teachers.

In an interview, she pointed to her endorsements from individuals like former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, former Councilman Reed Williams and former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte as the type of centrists she’d model her council office after.

“I feel like my supporters are all kind of in the moderate column, which is where I think we need to be, in the middle,” Taylor Aramburu said. “We need to be pragmatists and make decisions based on facts and data and community feedback, not on what our political party thinks we should do.”

At the GOP gathering, Bolch suggested the biggest obstacle to flipping a district that’s long eluded Republicans is keeping their voters together — something he said Spears is uniquely qualified to do.

He praised her years of past service to the party, often volunteering to knock more doors than candidates’ paid staff, and a May 16 fundraiser at Max & Louie’s NY Diner backed up the notion she’s backed by a broad swath of both social conservatives and more business-minded supporters.

“Generally on our side, candidates either appeal to the moderates or they appeal to the more conservatives — Misty appeals to everybody,” Bolch said. “She listens, and just the way she deals with people, she is a unifier.”

Clarification: Spears’ campaign followed up after publication with additional information about her Discover Bank case.